


A Kind Of Coming Of Age

by Laurasauras



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Davesprite related angst (minor), First Kiss, Fluff, Gay Panic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 10:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18754801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurasauras/pseuds/Laurasauras
Summary: John needs to learn how to shave on the ship. Davesprite helps.





	A Kind Of Coming Of Age

**Author's Note:**

> There's a bit of denial of gay here, and minor Davesprite and "our guardians are dead" angst, but it's mostly fluff. Read with caution if those are triggers. :)

‘What even is an almanac, anyway?’

You jump, which is just about the worst thing you can do with a razor in your hand, even if it’s closed. You turn to glare at Dave Sprite, who is currently using his sprite powers to see what you’re reading even though the book is open and the cover is hidden against the sink.

‘Fuck off,’ you tell him. Your voice cracks, but you soldier through it. ‘I’m concentrating.’

‘Hey, man, I’m not here to break your concentration. I’m just a lowly spirit guide of infinite wisdom, I got this tingle in my balls like someone was accessing information that I hadn’t provided in cryptic riddles and I had to come running, it’s written into my code right next to the line that goes “if jamming, then irresistible”.’

‘As awesome as your infinite bullshit faucet is,’ you say, forcefully cheery and turning back to the book, ‘go run it near Jade. I’m shaving.’

‘She’s sleeping. And you’re not shaving, you’re reading with a razor in your hand. Pretty sure there’s a difference.’

You sigh and turn the page dramatically. Then you realise you weren’t done reading about why you need to lather in circles and flick back. You didn’t want to do this at all, but every time you catch your reflection you see these stupid hairs on your chin and no one raised by your dad could just leave them. 

He should be teaching you. He should have given you the book himself as extra material and you would have rolled your eyes and said you didn’t need it but you’d probably flick through it and you wouldn’t even need it because he’d show you how to do all this himself, guide you through it like he always did.

‘You should just use a safety razor. We’ll get Jade to send us down to my apartment, Bro had a fuckload of disposables.’

‘That’s not how—’ you stop yourself before you say something really mean. Dave Sprite can be a bit overbearing sometimes, but it’s a small ship. And his bro is just as dead as your dad. ‘I want to do it properly.’

Dave Sprite floats into the bathroom and you step slightly to the side so he can read too. How often are you supposed to sharpen this thing? You don’t even feel that comfy using knives in the kitchen, you tend to let Jade cut things and you wash up. 

‘Maybe it is better this way,’ Dave Sprite says. ‘Bro kinda looked like a hobo. Someone gave him a dollar when we were waiting for the crossing lights to change one time.’

That makes you laugh, just a little bit. More just so he knows that you appreciate him lightening the mood than out of actual humour. 

‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ you say, quietly.

‘Well shit, I might have failed on every conceivable level as a sprite, but I gotta have some fucking use. Let me get mystical all up in here.’

Dave Sprite gives you one of his minimalist smiles and turns his attention to the book. Orange light pours out of his eyes and _The Fatherly Gent’s Shaving Almanac_ is lifted into the air. The pages flip noisily as he reads it with his powers. He did this a lot when you first got on the ship, but then the reality of _three years_ sunk in and he realised he didn’t want to rush his way through any experience. Better not to burn through all the reading material. Even if you have a lot.

He’s really careful about putting it back on the counter like he knows you’re feeling a bit protective of it. You know his sprite magic isn’t always that precise. 

‘Maybe I should ask Nanna?’ you say.

‘If I learned anything from that experience, it’s that this is man’s business,’ Dave Sprite says seriously. 

You nod. Man’s business. You thumb over the small hairs on your chin thoughtfully. If you and Dave Sprite could battle giant imps, you obviously can figure this out.

‘Is that a new razor, do you know?’

‘Dad said the old ones were made better,’ you say, your voice too quick like you’re defending why you took it. It’s not like he can use it anymore.

Dave Sprite holds out his hand and you reluctantly pass him the razor. It looks strange in his birdy hands, but most things do. It was pretty funny watching him learn how to use the XBox all over again. 

He flicks it open and you both stare at the shiny edge. He looks at you nervously before looking back at it with even greater focus. He cautiously runs his thumbclaw over it. A small sliver comes off and stays on the blade like it’s magnetised. 

‘What does that mean?’ you whisper. 

‘Means it’s sharp as fuck,’ Dave Sprite whispers back. ‘Why are we whispering?’

You clear your throat and he forgets to keep his lips covering his teeth when he smiles at you. At a different, less important time, you’d probably be feeling pretty proud of that.

‘What now?’ you ask.

‘Lather.’ He closes the blade with a confident gesture. You’re a bit jealous that he looks so at ease with it in his hand. You guess a sword is probably scarier than a razor, but it doesn’t quite feel fair. This is something _you_ should be good at. He’s good at plenty already.

You decaptchalogue the shaving cream you grabbed back at your place and frown at Dave Sprite when he bursts out laughing. You just got what was there!

‘Did you want—’ he gasps, in between laughter, ‘to remove—oh God, there’s so much hahaha—every single hair on your body?’

‘I just thought it might as well be here as at my house!’ you say. ‘What are you laughing at, anyway, at least I _have_ hair.’

He has the stupidest laugh, it comes out all snorty when he loses control of it, and he’s got his hands to his eyes to wipe away worryingly sincere tears of mirth. It’s not that funny! You try and hit him, but your hand passes right through his dumb sprite body.

‘Oh fuck, I’m gonna die,’ he wheezes. ‘There has to be an imperial buttload of shaving cream here, Egbert. We’re outnumbered. There’s enough shaving cream here to fill up the whole damn ship.’

‘Stop exaggerating!’ you say. ‘It all fits in the bathroom with us!’

‘Dude, have you really never emptied one of these out onto your guardian while he was passed out because he left them laying around and you were feeling fuckin’ precocious?’

You shake your head.

Still struggling to contain his frankly embarrassing laughter, Dave Sprite pops the cap of a can and starts spraying it into the sink. You think you get it when the sink fills halfway up. But then it doesn’t stop. Holy shit, how much cream do they fit in those things? The sink fills and still Dave Sprite is spraying it. Finally, the hissing noise becomes higher and weaker and then stutters out. That’s so much!

‘You never even had whipped cream in a can?’

‘Dad always whipped cream himself,’ you say. 

‘We had very different childhoods,’ Dave Sprite notes. ‘Okay, uh, I guess we’ll just use some of this before we wash it down the sink. We need your face washed with hot water, book says shower works.’

Okay, that’s manageable. You pull your shirt off and turn the shower on. Dave Sprite lets out a quiet kind of strangled squawk noise and when you look back at him his face is yellow on his cheeks. You look down at your bare chest, which is just about the least noteworthy chest you’ve ever seen. You probably need Jade’s training bras more than she does and you’re _no-sun-for-eight-months_ pale. He’s pointedly looking at the opposite wall.

‘Are you seriously telling me that you don’t have pools in which to see half-naked boys at in Texas?’ you ask.

‘Not John Egberts,’ Dave Sprite mutters. ‘Look, I had a slight overreaction. I think I’m owed a few. Continue being way too casual about nudity, I’ll be cool.’

You roll your eyes at him and step out of your shorts so that you’re just in your boxers before getting into the shower. You’re not even naked. Dave Sprite’s weirdly prudish for a guy who claims to have Urban Dictionary memorised. 

‘So, uh, how about the game last weekend?’ Dave Sprite says.

‘What?’ you ask. 

‘I’m doing locker room talk, John.’

‘I’m pretty sure you’re doing it wrong.’

‘Oh, like you’d prefer me to say something like, “Man, that Jade sure has a pair of tits, doesn’t she?”’

‘I don’t think she does yet,’ you say philosophically. 

‘God fucking damn it, you’re going to actually kill me, I’m immortal and you’re going to kill me.’

You grin to the wall privately. It’s fun winding Dave Sprite up. 

You step out of the shower and dry your hair off in a towel before tying it around your waist. A few drops land on Dave Sprite’s feathers and he fluffs up. You flick more at him until he turns around and slaps your hand down. You grin at him. 

‘I think we should just put the cream where you want to shave,’ Dave Sprite says.

‘Okay!’ The mirror’s all fogged up because you forgot to put the fan on. You hesitate, squinting at your reflection. Even putting your glasses back on doesn’t help. 

‘I can do it,’ Dave Sprite says. ‘Would that be weird? That’d be weird. I mean, I use swordkind when I strife. They’re not remotely transferable skills, I just thought I’d say. I can see your face? Is probably the relevant qualification here. Also I’ve read the book.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ you say. 

‘Really?’

‘I mean, it’s probably the only chance you’re gonna get at shaving a face anyway, bird brain!’

‘I hope you grow the filthiest little moustache, I’m gonna take pictures of it and Dave and I are gonna laugh at you until we’re 100.’

‘Yeah? Well I’m gonna pluck you in your sleep and make pillows out of your stupid feathers!’

You both keep a straight face for another two seconds before you both start laughing. You’re glad that at least if you’re stuck on this boat for the next two years you still have your best bro with you. 

You hold your chin up in his direction and he bites down on a smile before grabbing some of the mountain of shaving cream in his hand. Oh, bird hands, this could be weird. 

He floats so that he’s the same height as you before cautiously dabbing the cream onto your face. Once he’s got it where he wants it, he presses his lips awkwardly together before rubbing the cream in circles.

‘Shoulda asked if you had a brush thingy. I bet your dad had one. Hands are fine. Human hands are probably even better, huh.’

‘Your bird hands aren’t that weird,’ you lie. 

He flexes his fingers in front of your face and you keep admirably calm as you watch the scales shift with his skin.

You shrug, as if you don’t find it that impressive. 

‘I’ve seen weirder.’

His eyebrow creeps up disbelievingly from behind his shades. You’re actually not sure if he can take those off now he’s a sprite. They’re orange like him, they might be a part of him. 

‘I’m gonna shave your face off with a scary sharp straight-edge, you wanna chicken out? You’re not the chicken here.’

‘Dave, I’m not the chick—God damn it!’

He smirks at you and starts to rinse the sink out. 

‘Just sayin’ bro, even if you take away the fact that you’re putting your life in my weird bird hands, this is like the single most erotic experience of my young life and I have thrice put my tongue inside your ecto-sister’s mouth.’

‘Aw, gross, man!’ you protest. 

The cream is dissolving under the water and Dave Sprite’s hands, but it’s taking forever. He keeps talking while he waits because of course he does.

‘No, I’m serious. It’s like this whole thing, like in a James Bond movie or something. It’s hella gay, it’s like gayer than ice cream.’

‘Your bro really messed you up,’ you tell him. Neither this, nor ice cream is gay. Rose is probably having a field day with the bullshit real Dave is saying on the meteor.

Dave Sprite opens his mouth and then closes it. He shakes his hands to get rid of as much moisture as he can and then sighs before wiping his hands on the towel you’re wearing, right over your butt. 

‘Hey!’

‘It’s actually the most innocent place, bro, I thought this out,’ he sighs. ‘Look at me, restraint of a goddamn saint, I didn’t cop a squeeze or anything.’

‘Just get rid of my stupid pubey chin hairs, God!’

Dave Sprite flicks open the razor and holds it exactly how your dad used to. You used to watch him shave all the time when you were really little. It was interesting. You kinda wish you’d kept doing it up until more recent times, now. You got so caught up not wanting to go through the same stupid conversations where neither of you knew anything about the things the other one liked that you just avoided him altogether. 

‘Fingers crossed I don’t kill you,’ Dave Sprite mutters. 

You cross your fingers. You look down and the hand he isn’t holding the razor in has its fingers crossed too. You smile. 

He stops crossing his fingers so that he can hold your cheek down. You frown at him, but he isn’t looking at your eyes. His tongue pokes out a little as he touches the razor to your face and then makes a short, slow stroke. 

He takes his hands away and looks at your skin. He sighs with relief. 

‘No hair, no blood, that’s what we call a fuckin’ victory, Egbert,’ he says. 

‘Calling it early, bro!’ you tell him.

His mouth twitches up a bit. He wipes the razor on your towel and brings it back up to your face. He’s more confident this time, and doesn’t hesitate before doing it again. You watch his face shift as if he’s mirroring you, pouting his lips to stretch his cheek, angling his head upwards. It’s hard not to break your stillness, even with the danger of the razor nearby, it’s making you want to laugh so bad and the fact that you’re not allowed to is making that urge even worse.

Dave Sprite must see that something’s wrong, because he pauses to raise his eyebrow at you and you take advantage of the safety to take a step back and laugh your ass off. 

‘What?’ he asks.

‘You were making the most ridiculous face!’

‘No I wasn’t,’ he says, automatically. ‘I don’t make ridiculous faces, I don’t make any kind of faces, I am the picture of stoicism. If you took a polaroid of me and stuck it onto my face, you wouldn’t even be able to tell, that’s how little my face moves.’

You keep laughing. This is the kind of bullshit he could get away with when you hadn’t seen him in person, when your only exposure to him was red text and the occasional blank faced selfie, but you don’t think you would have even believed him then. 

Dave Sprite has so many expressions, even if he holds in his laughter until he’s properly amused and even if there’s not a single scary movie out there that can make him look scared, you always know exactly what he’s thinking. Being able to keep a straight face while eating something gross is not the same thing as always having a straight face. 

Which you’re glad of! You like that Dave Sprite (despite his birdiness and his sprite stuff) is so real and human. He’s your best friend, not a robot, and it’s nice that you know what he’s thinking. 

‘Dude, just give me your fucking face already.’

You manage to control your laughter and relax your face enough that he can keep shaving you. You helpfully step a bit closer at the same time that he floats towards you and you bump together slightly before he corrects where he’s standing. What a doof.

You stare at his face as he starts again. You can’t see any hair on _his_ chin, or on his upper lip or cheeks. He has got pretty long sideburns, but he’s always had them. And the feathers on his collar go up his neck a little way you think, it’s hard to tell. 

You reach out to feel and Dave Sprite freezes as your thumb strokes over the unbelievably soft tiny feathers on his collar. You feel the way they give way to scales, also soft but in a very different way, and then skin. You watch his throat move next to your finger as he swallows and look up at his face. 

His expression is wary, and his cheeks are flushed yellow again. You like the contrast between the orange and the yellow, it makes you wonder if his cheeks are warm, whether he’s a normal human temperature at all now.

You touch his cheek, and it is warm, but no more than his neck. Softer than the skin of his neck, too, but maybe not as much as his scales or the little fluffy feathers. 

‘Um,’ Dave Sprite says.

‘What?’ you ask.

‘Oh cool, we’re just pretending like bros do this, like this is a normal bro activity, cool, I can do that.’

You roll your eyes.

‘I just wanted to feel!’

‘Asking’s always nice,’ he snarks.

‘May I feel up your weird birdy face, please?’ you ask sarcastically.

Dave Sprite stares at you for a moment and you performatively take your hand away and hold it up as if he needs to be able to see it.

‘Fine, yes, obviously you can touch my face,’ he says. ‘Jesus, Egbert, you could warn a guy though. I was _shearing_ you.’

‘Are you nearly done, or what?’ you ask.

Dave Sprite flicks the razor closed and folds his arms over his chest dramatically. His ruff looks like it’s a bit fluffier, but not in the way that means he’s actually annoyed. It gets ridiculous when he’s really defensive. 

‘Dude, I was making excellent time, you’re the one who started interrupting me to get up close and personal with my face. Yeah, you’re probably done, it’s not like I saw any hair anywhere other than your chin, I was just being thorough. Not my first choice in activity for the day, grooming my bro because he doesn’t know what he’s—oh my God, John, what are you doing!?’

You look down at your hands to see if there’s something on the towel that you’re wiping onto your face, but it looks fine. And it’s not like you were naked under the towel, you’re still wearing your boxers, and they’re not even embarrassing ones. Dave Sprite has moved to the far corner of the bathroom and covered his face with his hands, but you’re really not sure what’s got him all fluffed up.

‘Cleaning the foam off my face?’

‘Dave and me could be using my sprite powers to mess with Karkat if I’d just chosen to go with team meteor rather than stay with my best bro who is apparently determined to _torture_ me,’ he mumbles against his hands.

‘I’m not naked,’ you point out.

‘You’re _very_ close to it!’

You wrap the towel back around yourself even though there’s shaving cream on it so that Dave Sprite stops freaking out. He peeks out behind one of his hands and groans.

‘I’m acting like an idiot,’ he says.

‘Yeah,’ you agree.

‘If I was watching me act this way, I’d tell myself I was being an idiot.’

‘Want me to do it for you?’

‘I hate you,’ he says.

‘I think you might like me, actually,’ you say. 

Somehow, his feathers fluff up even more. If they get any more ridiculous, he’s going to be able to duck his head behind them. You kinda want to touch them to see what they feel like like this.

‘It’s okay!’ you assure him. ‘It’s kinda weird if being fused with a bird made you gay, but that’s okay!’

‘Oh my God, it’s not the _crow_ ,’ Dave Sprite groans. ‘Not that I am! But whatever hypothetical feelings are or are not around, they’re not crow related, okay, it’s not like the nesting thing, this was a pre-crow ocurrance.’

‘Do you want to kiss me?’ you ask him curiously.

‘Oh my God,’ Dave Sprite says. ‘ _Oh my God._ What the fuck. Um. Oh my God. Fuck. God. Fuck.’

Well, that’s not an answer. You don’t know if you want to kiss him. You kind of feel the same way about it as the feather touching thing. You’re kind of curious what it’d be like. His lips look like normal human lips. And he’s alive, which means he’ll probably be a better kisser than dead Rose. 

You’re not really sure what makes a kiss good or bad. You think you probably should be nervous or something, but you’re mostly just … normal.

‘Do you want to kiss me?’ Dave Sprite asks.

‘Yeah, okay!’

‘John, no. You can’t treat this like, I don’t know, me offering to play _Ghostbusters_ with you, this isn’t a casual question, I don’t want to think about this too hard if I can avoid it but I can’t not think about it now and if you’re not into it then you shouldn’t make me think about it any more than I already am, I—’

You step closer to him and he stops babbling.

‘I don’t know how I feel about anything,’ you tell him. ‘And maybe it would be nicer to not think about things like this, but if we just kiss now, then we know, right? No hard feelings either way.’

‘I’m not even human anymore—’

‘Oh my God, shut up.’

You grab him by one of his scaly hands and pull him down to your height as if he’s a balloon that you can tug around. His other hand braces on your shoulder and his tail flicks towards you like he wants to wrap it round your leg like he usually does, but he’s not letting himself right now.

You don’t really know how to start a kiss. You suddenly can’t remember what they do in movies and it’s really hard to think of anything now that Dave Sprite’s this close. It’s like his sprite magic is making your thoughts all slow and weird and you can’t stop staring at his lips like maybe if you look at them enough then you’ll figure out how to do this.

‘This is so gay,’ he whispers.

You try to swallow your giggle, but you’re not entirely effective. He puts the hand that isn’t holding yours still on your neck and you both feel immediately more serious than you’ve ever felt and like you’re going to panic laugh. You swallow nervously. 

He pulls himself closer to you like you’re an anchor until your lips are inches apart and you realise you can reach him now, and maybe you should do that. You lean in the rest of the way until your lips are touching, and then remember to close your eyes.

He pulls back after a moment, but you drag him back towards you and kiss him again. You’re not done feeling whatever it is that you’re feeling, even though you have no idea what you’re doing and you kind of feel like there’s something more to this than just putting lips together. 

Dave Sprite’s hand moves from your neck up into your hair and he moves his lips in a way that makes your whole body shiver and pull him a bit closer. He breaks apart to breathe for a second but you pull him back again and try to move your lips like he did.

‘John,’ he mumbles against your lips.

You bite his lower lip clumsily and with just a tiny bit of pressure, because that feels like the easiest way to make him not _question_ all of this and just let you keep kissing him. It feels like the most important thing in the world that you keep doing this.

And then you realise that he might not actually want to kiss you because he might not actually be crow-gay after all.

You let him go and take a step back. He floats with you, because he’s still holding onto you. 

‘Um,’ you say. 

You can’t stop staring at his lips, every time you manage to drag your eyes up to look him in the eye or try to look at the wall or something instead, you find yourself staring at his lips again.

‘Yeah, no, I’m … I think I have gay feelings. For you. So. Thank you for making me confront my sexuality, I’m going to go scream into a salamander belly like it’s a squishy, alive pillow.’

You frown and make an extra effort to look him in the eye. 

‘So why are we not kissing?’ you ask.

‘Because, dude, experiment a success! I like boys! Or Johns, whichever, maybe it’s a you-specific thing.’ He thinks about it for a moment, eyes up at the ceiling, and then shakes his head abruptly. ‘Nope, just realising this might explain some shit. _God_ , I didn’t want to think about this, this is so _inconvenient!’_

You struggle not to pout. Is that really it? 

He looks at you again and takes a deep breath. He still hasn’t moved his hands, and the one holding yours is kinda sweaty. Or maybe it’s your hand. You honestly can’t tell, and that almost feels sweet if it weren’t a bit gross.

‘Is it ‘cause you’re with Jade?’ you ask.

‘I’m not with Jade. I’ve just kissed her a bunch of times. She …’ he trails off, and you frown at him some more. He’s not telling you _why_.

‘Look, dude, there’s a real Dave out there who is not fused with a bird and who I can guarantee you is also super into you. You and Harley should gang up on him. He’ll love it.’

‘Why can’t _you_ love it,’ you say, trying not to whine too much. ‘I like _you_.’

Dave Sprite tries to turn away, but you don’t let go of his hand and he doesn’t use his sprite magic to escape, so you think you’ve still got a chance. 

‘It’s like back when we were properly playing the game,’ you say. ‘I wanted to talk to the other Dave because he and I were on the same level and we’d gone through stuff, you know? But now you and I have gone through stuff, like why would I want to be with him when I like the you who has been on this ship with me? He hasn’t … he doesn’t … I just want to kiss you, okay?’

Dave hesitates for a really long time, staring past you at the shower or something, and you want to talk at him so much, but you let him think it out. 

After way too long, he looks back at you, takes your cheek in his weird bird-hand, and kisses you again. You press your lips against his enthusiastically, until he slows you down and you decide that you guess you’re okay with him being better than you at one more thing.

You’ll catch up, anyway.


End file.
